“As long as you live, you learn; and as long as you learn, you live.” ~Howard Hendricks

Education doesn’t just mean going to school. People learned for thousands of years with no formal schooling. Everyone receives a certain type of education simply by learning from the experiences of life. Lifelong learning takes place as a person deals with experiences of all kinds, makes decisions, reads and listens, forms opinions, and develops relationships with others. Just think of all the things you learned how to do in your first years of life before you went to school!

Likewise, the idea that people should study for about twelve years and then start living is not always the case. Everything that a person needs to know is not necessarily mastered in the first 18 years, particularly with all of the rapid changes taking place in our modern world. One’s whole life is a continuous learning process, so the mark of a truly educated person is not how much he knows, but how well he knows how to learn.

Educational Words of Wisdom

“The fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” ~Aristotle

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” ~Abraham Lincoln

“What we learn to do, we learn by doing.” ~Thomas Jefferson

“Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything he learned in school.” ~Albert Einstein

“I once went all day without food and all night without sleep to enable me to think. I found no advantage in it; it’s best to study.” ~Confucius

“Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.” ~Socrates

“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” ~Theodore Roosevelt

“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” ~Albert Einstein

“Above all things we must take care that the child, who is not yet old enough to love his studies, does not come to hate them.” ~Quintilian

“I never let my schooling interfere with my education.” ~Mark Twain

“A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.” ~George Santayana

“Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.” ~Albert Einstein

“The education of a man is never completed until he dies.” ~Robert E. Lee

“You have to study a great deal to learn a little.” ~Charles Montesquieu

My new book, Learning for Life: Educational Words of Wisdom, contains almost 3,000 quotations by more than 1,000 people on teaching, learning, and the pursuit of knowledge. Quotes are categorized by subject, covering traditional and nontraditional forms of education. This book features both rare and classic sayings by philosophers, scientists, writers, political leaders, psychologists and educators from throughout history. It is useful in the home, church, classroom and library for reading, reference, newsletters, reports and presentations. An ideal resource for parents, teachers, home educators, unschoolers, school reformers, speakers, writers, history buffs, book lovers, etc. Includes appendix, biographical notes, index.

Learning for Life isn’t just a book of quotations…“it’s a handbook of living lessons on learning!”
For more information, or to order a copy, please click here. Learning for Life: Educational Words of Wisdom is also available on Amazon.com. Learning for Life: Educational Words of Wisdom, by Teri Ann Berg Olsen. Published in July 2004, 6x9” softcover, 420 pages, ISBN 0-9759528-0-3, $19.95.